Good Sleep, Good Recovery

I believe we are well aware of the importance of a good night's sleep. Feeling refreshed and energized might be rare, but when you achieve that upon waking up, it boosts the spirits. Personally, I'm super interested in how my body recovers from day to day, and how it effects my workouts.

Without going into all the scientific details, I started using a Whoop fitness band back in November. The band is an wrist strap that I wear 24/7, and it tracks sleep, strain, and recovery using different metrics. I've been using it for just over 2 months now, and I've started to notice a few trends, both to do with sleep and following recovery. The beauty is, you don't need any type of fitness band to try to use this information to YOUR benefit.

1. My best recoveries each week consistently appear TWO days following my greatest day's sleep (total duration of naps and nightly sleep).

2. My worst recoveries also come up TWO days following my lowest day's sleep.

3. The more consistent I was with my total sleep time each day, tended to lead to higher recovery, on average.

Example: sleeping 7:15 one night and 7:30 another led to better recovery than 6:45 one night and 8:00 another, regardless of them being the same total duration.

What to take away, especially approaching the Open, try to get a great sleep two nights prior to the day you plan on taking on the Open WOD (nerves might make sleeping challenging the night before anyways). Also, try to be consistently getting enough sleep each night, and if at all possible adding naps on days you are short, will help too.

Rest up, and see you in the gym!

Adam

Training Wednesday - Thursday

Warm-up:

3 cycles E90s x 4 rounds

Bear Complex-

empty bar for first 2 rounds, then add weight next 2 rounds if want (stay light).

Bear complex is a full clean into overhead followed by a back squat to overhead

WOD: Ascension

This is our second experience with this wod and it is a tough challenge to say the least! Aim to be smooth and consistent with your movements as opposed to overloading and breaking down technically! For most people, Rx will be way too much, so look to scale the weight as needed for yourself as opposed to trying to fit into a category.